- Today's Word
Boondoggle
[BOON-daw-guhl]
Definition
- (noun) A wasteful or unnecessary project or activity, often one that is funded by the government or a large organization. It can also describe a situation where someone is getting paid for doing little or no work.
Example
The chairman’s pet project to build a new corporate retreat was widely seen as a boondoggle, wasting millions of dollars on an unnecessary luxury facility.
Fun Fact
The term “boondoggle” has an interesting origin story. It was coined in the 1920s by scoutmaster Robert H. Link, who used it to describe the decorative lanyards and braided cords made by Boy Scouts. These crafts were seen as a waste of time and resources by some critics. The term gained wider use in the 1930s during the Great Depression, when it was applied to government projects that were viewed as wasteful or inefficient, particularly those associated with the New Deal programs. One famous example was the “boondoggle” of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which was criticized for employing people to perform seemingly pointless tasks like raking leaves or building roads to nowhere. Today, “boondoggle” remains a popular term for any project or activity that is seen as a waste of time, money, or resources.
(noun) A complicated and confusing situation that is extremely difficult to escape or make progress through.
What began as a simple contract dispute had become a morass of litigation, counter-claims, and procedural delays that no one involved could see the end of.
Morass derives from the Dutch moeras, meaning “marsh” or “swamp,” itself from the Old French marais — “marsh.” It entered English in the 17th century with its literal meaning of boggy, waterlogged ground before quickly acquiring its figurative sense of any situation that traps and exhausts in the same way a physical swamp does — something that looks passable until you’re already in it and discovering that every step forward costs more than the last.